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Monday, January 9, 2012

Strawberry Soup with Caramel-Cinnamon croutons/Dessert for soup and vice versa.

It feels good to be able to look into an empty New Post page; Pensieve out those food thoughts that have been locked in for far too long.

Trust me when I say I'm not slacking off on posting. Craving the smell of cinnamon-and-apple baking in the oven is what I'm doing. Unfortunately, my boring-tiresome-annoying-masochistic-but pretty freaking awesome-sporadically dayjob gets in the way.

While any form of food-catharsis should obviously take the shape of a chocolate-orange ganache tart, what with the New Year hullaballo (I said hullaballo, and we're all still alive), I'm going down the Greek yogurt route. OK, "New Year! New Fitness Plan!" isn't the only factor... I only had minimal time and ingredients to prep and photograph. And as a result of a happy accident, what started as a Strawberry-and-yogurt breakfast bowl ended up as a Strawberry-soup dessert.

You can obviously make this richer with fresh cream, mascarpone, half-and-half or sour cream. You can also just macerate the strawberries with a squeeze of lemon juice and a few teaspoons of sugar. I prefer the fruit to be the overall star, so I use a combination of fresh strawberries and roasted strawberries.

Ooh. The croutons. I used to be a massive fan of the butter-fried croutons Mum used to strew on our Sunday breakfast-tomato soup, growing up. I used to inhale the left over buttery crumbs, lick the fresh cream off the bowl clean... it was a happier time.

These croutons smell like caramel popcorn. Nah, I'm happier now. Saying something smells like caramel corn is the equivalent of a food-OBE around these parts. Make it! And use real butter, for the love of God.